So today on my video blog unboxing, we have the XFX Radeon 5870. So this is the
new well the DirectX11 card on the market right now. So that means if you
want to run DirectX11 titles, which are coming out on Windows 7, you will need a
5870. And the 5850 is actually coming shortly. So as I said before, this is an
XFX card. So, even though it's using the reference cooler like all of the 5870s
at launch, you do get the benefit of XFX's five-star support, which means
you've got a double lifetime modder friendly warranty. And I'm pretty sure
there are other benefits, too. But, uh, this is an unboxing, so we'll go with
the unboxing aspect of it. Okay. I love this. I've seen this before with XFX's
cards. It's a door hanger. Do not disturb. I'm gaming. Awesome. It also
has a convenient little thing which has your part number and your serial number.
So, if you ever need to call XFX support, you've got all the info you
need right there. Here's your quick installation guide showing you how to
install the card in your system. Then you have a full installation guide which
shows you how to install the drivers. So, they're instructing you to use the
XFX included CD, but by the time these cards are actually out there, you're
going to want to download the latest drivers on ati.com. So, here's your
driver installation CD. And then we have, oh, congratulations on your
purchase of a new hi Radeon graphics card. And you get a copy of Dirt 2,
which is included, as far as I know, with all 5870 graphics cards. So, let's
see. Let's do the accessory package here first. Okay. In here, we have a
Crossfire bridge, uh, two Molex to PCI Express 6 pin
adapters, and one DVI to VGA adapter.
Now, that brings us to the card itself,
which you can see is incredibly well packed in here with all this foam.
That's awesome to see. Okay, here we go.
This is the XFX Radeon
HD5870. Now, here, let's just start at the back of the card and move our way to
the front. So, we've got DisplayPort, which is an open standard, a lot like
HDMI, except with HDMI, which we also have, you got to pay a royalty. Now,
like all HD series cards for the last couple generations, you do get audio out
via HDMI. So, that's really cool. Then, you've got dual DVI as well as those
other display standards. So, you can actually run up to three monitors off of
this card. Now, here you've got your vents. So, let's uh go around. We'll
have a look at the sticker design because the sticker design is going to be the major difference between all of
the launch cards. So, you can see the fan here sucks air in from the back and
from the top of the card and then exhausts it out that little tiny vent.
Now, that is a bit of a limitation of the design, but there's not much we can do about it. This has been kind of
compared to the Batmobile in uh in shape here and I think that's definitely an
accurate comparison. It's pretty cool looking from the front up on the top.
Let's get to the uh the nononsense features here. So, we've got two PCI
Express six pin connectors. This is a very power efficient card, so there's no
need to go crazy and put on a bunch of 8 pin sort of connectors. When it's
installed in your case, it's going to look a little bit something like this. You got your ATI Radeon graphics logo
thing here. And then on the back, we've seen this before with the launch
versions of the GTX 260 and 280. We've got a full heat sink on the back cooling
the RAM in addition to your back plate. So, I really like to see that, too. This
is a PCI Express 16x card. And I think
that pretty much sums up the Radeon HD5870.